LETTER: What about honoring the everyday heroes

David M. Kennedy’s letter to the editor about Confederate soldiers on the courthouse square moved me to ask what puzzled some of us for years: Why always soldiers on courthouse squares?

Policemen, firemen, journalists have lost lives on the job. Those who don’t, as well as dedicated workers in all levels of medical and healthcare, all in work for educating our children and keeping them safe — teachers and others in education, day care workers, foster parents, social workers (try shadowing any of these for a day) deserve as much credit as those who go to war abroad. If they don’t die on the job, all the more credit is deserved for years of service and dedication.

There should be more recognition of honest businessmen and women who provide jobs, goods and services. Much would not be accomplished without volunteers; we often do not even know who they are.

Whatever one thinks of benefits given farmers and those in agriculture, they work hard so that we can have the world’s highest standard of living.

Just once, somewhere could we have a sculpture with the stages of a child’s life — toddler, child, teen — to remind us how all of these heroes started out and how they depended on the rest of us to provide the opportunities to have lives meaningful to us as well as themselves. It does “take a village.”

Carmen Karston

Gainesville

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